When Bollywood aced retro

When Bollywood aced retro

Imran Khan-Katrina Kaif starrer Mere Brother Ki Dulhan has taken to a long-standing Bollywood fad and features Khan paying tribute to the big Khans of the industry: Salman and Shah Rukh.

Parodies of the legendary retro era have been extremely popular in Bollywood off late. And rightfully so. If executed properly, these 'tributes' make for supremely entertaining sequences and have a history of developing a sort of a cult following of their own.

Here, then, we present some of the best on-screen tributes we've seen in the recent past:

Ready

In Salman Khan's recent superhit, the actor takes his Veer heroine Zarine Khan for a trip down memory lane as he doffs his hat to classic films like Barsaat, Mughal-E-Azam and Sholay in the song Character Dheela.

It's sweet but the dheela-ness of the song makes this more spoof than homage.

3 Idiots

It isn't saluting any one song in particular, but Rajkumar Hirani's 3 Idiots had a song called Zoobie Doobie where Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor go all retro, channelling the films of Guru Dutt, Raj Kapoor and even saluting Vishal Bhardwaj's fantastic Blue Umbrella.

Om Shanti Om

There are tributes galore in all of Farah Khan's films, but the Deewangee song in Om Shanti Om (that featured almost every Bollywood actor!) has to be singled out because it is a clear echo of the star-studded John Jaani Janardan number in Naseeb.

Farah, a longtime admirer of Manmohan Desai, pays tribute to him whenever she can, but this is one of the most spectacular examples.

Luck By Chance

Zoya Akhtar's clever debut film Luck By Chance is an intelligent look at Bollywood and all its trappings, and while there is much to point at and giggle, the best tribute perhaps is with the character of Rishi Kapoor, playing a caricatured version of Subhash Ghai.

Dev D

Everybody loved the Emosanal Atyachaar song in Anurag Kashyap's Dev D, but few noticed the fact that the song starts with the words 'Ek do teen chaar chheh,' counting from one to six but crucially skipping over the five -- a hat-tip to Anurag Kashyap's never-released first film, Paanch.